Beech worktop

The workbench top is now assembled and glued. It's good and heavy (about 70kg I think) and the glued joints look pretty robust.



I've made a start at planing it level, which is quite hard work, so it will be a day or two before it's flat. The discolouration on the surface is the glue I used. Eventually I will have planed it all off to get a clean surface. The glue tends to clog the plane's mouth, so that also slows the work down a little. The clean part nearest the camera is the bit I was able to get through the big noisy planer after it was glued.

The under surface is worse than the top, but it only needs to be roughly level - sufficiently so that I can fasten it securely to the underframe (the next job I need to do).

Despite having a large and miscellaneous collection of clamps to hold it all while it glued, the job wasn't entirely satisfactory. I ought to have known that running each piece through the planer/thicknesser would give me a cross-section that was at best a parallelogram, and not necessarily a rectangle. The result was that when I clamped them altogether, I ended up with a surface that had a slightly saw-backed profile. The high edges will all need to be planed down.

In addition, some of the pieces were warped not just horizontally (in the same plane as the surface) but also vertically. These had to be clamped down level using thick battens across the high spots. The result was some end-to-end undulations too.

And of course, the grain on the separate pieces runs in alternating directions, so actually getting it smooth with the plane is a bit of a challenge. I found myself wondering if I wouldn't be better trying to borrow a (hand-held) electric plane.

The surface is just over 50cm wide (20 inches). I have not yet decided whether I want to add a row of lift-out tool trays at the back. The advantage of that would be (a) to give a place to put planes and chisels rather than under the job I'm working on, and (b) to make it easy to put clamps at the back to hold wider projects down onto the surface (without having to pull the whole bench away from the wall). The disadvantage is simply the added width of the bench.

Sticking together

Today I drilled the larger part of the dog holes. This took a while, and I found that a flat 19mm wood bit will flex slightly when going through 8cm of wood. As a result, although the holes on the outer or top surface of the bench are nicely in line, they emerge rather more crookedly than I would have liked.

In any event, I was able to start gluing the first strips of wood together.



It's a miscellaneous collection of cramps holding it all together, and I'll find out tomorrow what sort of a job they (and I) have done. I've only stuck these three strips together as I want to run them through the thicknesser afterwards, and with two more (the next two strips will have to be done together, because of the direction they warp) they would have been too wide for it.

I won't be doing what I'd originally planned - gluing up three separate sections, then gluing these together. Although that would have let me put each section through the thicknesser, I was concerned that I wouldn't have straight enough edges to glue together, and probably very little in the way of flex with such a thick laminate, however much I tightened the sash cramps.

Instead, these three strips will form the front of the bench - the bit that I'll be working on most - and the other strips will be added a couple at a time and just planed down level by hand.



I've done the gluing with the boards upside down, in the hope of getting the top surface, currently resting on nice straight sash cramps, reasonably level. The underside is less important.

In the both pictures some of the dog holes in the surface of the bench are visible. The gap in the boards closest to the camera is where I plan to put a wagon vice - or at least, my own home-made version of one. There's a sliding piece in progress with a couple of dog-holes, which will eventually engage into the slots inside the gap in the boards. It will be used to clamp work onto the surface, using a fixed dog in one or the other of the surface holes. There is also a row of holes in the front of the bench, for supporting long planks etc.

I've left the ends at varying lengths (partly depending on where the knots are) so I can do a nice clean cut all the way across with a hand-held circular saw when the whole bench-top is glued up.

The temporary bench underneath is made from a couple of the thinner planks (34mm) that I will be using to make the legs from. When I start doing the legs I should have the new bench top to work on (supported on the same workmates).

Gated at last

Today I hung the remaining gates. The bigger ones were a bit more difficult, but the principles were the same - just a heavier sledgehammer needed.



There will eventually be a proper wooden rail fence on each side - I shall try to match it to the gates, with five bars - but at present there's an electric fence. The wire goes over the top via a couple of bamboo poles.

The top gate is now complete with the smaller pedestrian gate hung too. It was fairly tricky drilling through the sleepers across the widest part, which is a lot further than a normal wood-bit will reach. I do have an extension rod for these, but it goes without saying that the grub-screws that should hold the drill-bit in were missing. I improvised, but it was a bit clunky. For these holes I drilled a smaller pilot-hole first. It made getting them level a bit easier.



The latch on the pedestrian gate isn't really quite satisfactory, and I think I'll shift it down to the gate in the wood, and replace it with a simple, maybe spring-loaded, bolt. In any event, I'll have to fix a reasonably large wooden post to the wall of the farmhouse to take it.

Annoyingly, the dogs have no trouble at all ducking under the gates. Still, the cows won't be able to slide under, and that's why we put the gates up.

Hangin' out (in the rain)

I was able to hang the gate down into the woods, and this pair up by the farmhouse:



The gates are not only level with the ground, but with each other too, which was a surprise. The small pedestrian gate on the right is just wedged in place at the moment.

The gap under the gates is a bit bigger than I'd like, but if they were any lower the left-hand gate wouldn't open fully without some drastic excavation of the slope and stone wall. 

I've also rigged up a useful electric fence down at the other gateway, until I get around to making a proper fence and dry-stone wall. I then found that I couldn't get out of the gates there unless I switched off the current, so the postman will have a bit of a job delivering our letters. So I'd better get those next gates up before his/her next visit tomorrow. But there's too much rain right now.

Tom Mix in .... Cement!

With some help from Adam, we mixed a couple of tons of concrete and set the posts in place.

Getting them upright was not as difficult as I'd expected. The easiest way seemed to be to pour the concrete round the post, then hit the post with a sledgehammer until the spirit level said it was upright. After that, it was a matter of jamming in a few bits of wood or stone to hold it there.



and here are the ones at the top:



By the time we were finished it was pretty well dark, so cleaning up the mixer and the tools was a bit hit-and-miss.

I also had time to assemble the wood for the top surface of my bench-in-progress. In the middle of the row are a couple of pieces (F and H) that had to be laminated horizontally, because the wood wasn't thick enough without adding a bit extra.



I have tried to sort these pieces so that any further warping of the wood is minimised: this is done by putting the outside edge of each piece (the one that was closest to the bark on the tree) up against another outside piece. That way the natural tendency of each piece to bend outwards (towards the bark) is cancelled out.

I'll be gluing these together shortly, but in three goes. This is because I wish to put each glued section through the thicknesser to get it flat on top (and underneath). If I glue them all up at once they will be too wide for the machine.

In a hole

Yesterday with a little help from the local young man with a digger



we got the post-holes done for the gates. A surprisingly large proportion turned out to be dug into the bedrock, so it's a good thing I didn't try doing it myself.

Today I fetched just under two tonnes of sand and ballast, and some bags of cement, to be ready for tomorrow when we hope to make the concrete.

I couldn't resist trying out the railway sleepers in their new holes



and although I can't say they are aesthetically pleasing, I imagine they will grow on me with time. If we manage to get the concrete in properly they should be solid enough for the gates, too. And we'll soon find out whether they are far enough apart for the lorry with our woodchips (for the boiler).

During the day we also turned up this little creature



He's a fire salamander - more usually yellow and black, but the colours do vary, and maybe this is a juvenile - he's certainly quite small.

What a planker!

With some help from a friend (thanks, Gary) I cut up the big planks into the smaller strips for laminating the bench top.

My custom-made sawmill looked like this:



The trestle at the front is the input table, roughly level with the surface of the circular saw, and the workmate at the back is the output table. Even with this, and copious amounts of candle wax on the saw table and saw itself, the big planks were tough to cut up. A dozen or so times the saw overheated and cut out. We then had to wait for it to cool down.

Still, it worked. The end result was a set of pieces of beech for laminating, each about 50mm by 75mm.



There are a couple of pices cut from the the thinner (34mm) wood in there too. The ones at the left that are clamped together were particularly bent. I was curious to see whether the small clamps I have would straighten up the bent bits (and they do), and whether they would be a reasonably straight unit when clamped (and they are).

Today work was suspended for a while when Bob came over in his AZU:




He's hoping to make his one (the one on the right) look a bit more like mine, by changing the engine for the later unit. It's a lot of work, but I am sure he'll succeed.

Tomorrow we're expecting Jeremy and his digger to make the post holes for our new gates. These have now been fitted with their hinges



thanks to Tony's extremely useful pillar drill.

The weather forecast is very good for the next few days. I don't want the posts to float out of their holes before I can concrete them in, and luckily there's no rain forecast before the weekend.

Making a workbench

After working for a number of years on the carpenters bench that I found slowly rotting away in a shed - that would be this one:



I decided that it would be a good idea to get myself a new one. The old one has a very substantial twist in the top (which is also in poor condition), and the legs are rickety. One leg - the one closest the camera - I replaced myself, but my attempts to clean up the top with a plane revealed - ouch! - that at some time a large number of nails had been driven into it. They had rusted enough to make it impossible to pull them out. It is a classic French country design: note the slanting back legs, the way the front legs are fixed with a combined mortise and dovetail (this probably has a technical name), and the "leg vice" nearest the camera. The lower tray is my own addition in the hope of making it less rickety, and the three drawers beneath the surface I added too (from an old armoire which is now a wardrobe). It was originally simply a single slab of (I think) oak with four legs mortised directly into it. I only last week worked out what was missing from the leg vice - pegs in the sliding pin at the bottom - and it is now remarkably effective. But sadly the bench as a whole is beyond repair.

So I went out with my credit card and came back with my new bench:



in kit form, that is. These are rough-sawn beech planks: two of them 54mm thick and 3.5 metres long (11 foot 6inches), and the other five 34mm thick and 3 metres long (a bit less than 10 foot). The bigger ones are too heavy for me to lift, and driving back with them like this was a little tricky, as they overlapped the front of the trailer quite a bit, which meant that I would take a tight right-hand corner at the risk of knocking out the rear window of the car.

I plan to remove the leg-vice mechanism from the old bench and incorporate it in the new one, but with a better lower fulcrum.



The big screw is a square-cut thread (3 and a half threads per inch) on a rod of 23mm diameter, and concealed behind the fixed leg is a big iron boss with an internal thread to match. What it doesn't have (and should) is a way of retaining the outer end of the rod in the moving jaw. At present if you undo the mechanism it tends to wind out of both the fixed and moving parts: ideally as it goes back it should bring the moving jaw with it. It needs a groove cut into metal rod at the outer end, and a two-part metal plate locating into the groove and fastened to the wood.

The design for the bench is based on one I found on the net:



It won't have the central trays, as I don't have room for a wide bench, and the shoulder vice - the one on the left - will be a leg vice which I have tried to sketch out. The top will be laminated from strips cut from the the thick plank. It will be about 70 to 75mm thick. The legs will be about 100mm square, and will be laminated from the thinner planks. I do plan to have a tray at the back, and I also hope to make the tail vice perform an additional task. More later ....